My name is Troy.
I'm a Southern boy transplated to a shiny capitol city in the Midwest doing my best to keep my worldview in motion.

Friday, November 03, 2006

Halloween Redux

Does it bother anyone besides me that as a design event, Halloween has no shelf life? I mean once it's over, it's over. No waiting until the next holiday before striking the set like you can during the days between Christmas and New Years (or between Christmas and St. Patrick's Day in my case). November 1st comes and suddenly all of those pumpkins with faces that were so cute only yesterday now seem like awkward guests who know they should leave the party but just can't seem to find the door.

Karen brought a pumpkin to work a couple of weeks ago, a decorative refugee that Marc had given her, leftover from a luncheon at church. At eight inches in diameter it has what I believe to be the golden circumference of sit-around vegetables. We looked it over. It was covered with hot-glued artificial fall-colored poppies and raspberries, neither of which can be found in nature this time of year. And it was topped with a tuft of dried pine needles that stuck straight up.

We ditched the foliage with the exception of the needles. This left the pumpkin looking like the mohawked head of a pre-adolescent boy. So we named him Justin and set him up on a nearby file cabinet that everyone passes. Eventually we made him paper eyes and a smile with Chicklets for teeth. I put a bag next to him along with a sign that read "Please, Feed Me." Justin was popular, especially with the ladies, and he acquired quite a bit of candy in a short amount of time, which he kindly (as kindly as can be expected of a 'tweener-aged pumpkin anyway) shared with Karen and me.

But then Halloween ended, and the next day Justin had that awkward "What am I doing here?" look. We stripped him of his human features. Now he is in a chrysalis state. At first we thought we'd turn him into a pumpkin turkey, a Thanksgiving Phoenix, with cut paper tail feathers, a few pheasant ones, too, and a beak. Then, inspired by the recent weigh-in on ham's popularity here at Growing Sense, we decided to make him into a pumpkin pig. Karen is off today looking for a pink marshmallow nose.

In the meantime, Justin's just sitting faceless on the cabinet, well almost faceless, he is sporting some big green googley eyes I had leftover from Halloween. They are supposedly candy, but they smell funny so I won't eat them. Candy typically has a very long shelf life, and it should never smell funny.